


And six seconds

by Acnara



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Soulmate AU, This was supposed to be adrabble, but guess what, my hand split
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acnara/pseuds/Acnara
Summary: The memory had dissolved like grew smoke, carring away Tom Riddle’s dark eyes and the little peak of skin both Dumbledore and Harry had been able to see before the boy had hid his hands behind his back. The unforgiving, black ink had winked at Harry from the inside of Tom´s wrists.
Tom Riddle did have numbers on him.
And they kept filling Harry’s thoughts at the oddest times.
-0-
Or the `everyone has a clock on their skin counting down to the day the will meet their soulmate AU´no one asked for but I wrote anyway





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamingTheMelody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingTheMelody/gifts), [sonarous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonarous/gifts).



> So Mel wrote a soulmate AU and I just had to do one too. I'm still terrible at life and could´t link to your story on tumblr so I went ahead with the next best option and just made it a gift...   
> And I also need to gift it to Jaleesa bc because otherwise Harry would still be crying mero tears and i don´t think fish tears are that healthy.
> 
> Btw this is totally a challenge now. Go write soulmate AUs everyone. my body is ready.
> 
> I also need to share with you a very important fact: cero in English is actually Zero. Amazing.

Harry’s soulmate clock peaked out from under the sleeve of his uniform when he raised his hand to rub his eyes.

It was late and he was tired, but profesor Snape had decided to ask for a full detailed inform about vampires that was due the next morning. Dumbledore had been reducing Harry’s free time more and more each month since the beginning of the year. Now his mornings where filled with classes, his afternoons with the headmaster and his pensieve, his nights with homework and his early mornings with the occasional torture vision courtesy of the Dark Lord.

Sometimes his life sounded utterly ridiculous.

He should concentrate on his inform, but the ink black numbers on his wrist kept catching his eyes. He stared at them, innocently displaying a long row of zeros for everyone to see.

How he had hated them, back when he was a kid.

Everyone knew about soulmate clocks. They were a count down: the amount of time a person should pass alone before they met the one that was supposed to fit them best. Their complementary, their other half. Children wore them proudly, years printed on their wrists like a promise. Adults even adorned the skin around them once they married their soulmate. Golden rings on fingers to symbolise choice, golden details on inner wrists to show fate.

Harry’s countdown had always been a lonely, empty row of zeros.

He brushed over the numbers with his thumb, smudging the tiniest bit of ink over his skin. A humorless smile crawled onto his face when he noticed just how much _darker_ the the ink of the number was than the actual ink he was using on his paper. The kind of darkness one would expect from a black hole. How unbelievably fitting

He had spent years trying not to think too hard about his soulmate, but tonight his mark kept popping up on his mind. It was only obvious, he had told himself. Earlier that week he had seen Tom Riddle’s soulmate mark again after all.

The orphanage had been a surprise. He logically _knew_ the Voldemort from the diary had hated his Muggle name, so he was probably not living with his father. Dumbledore had told him -hell, he had seen with his own eyes- Merope Gaunt’s story, but the sight of the orphanage had still managed to make him stop his tracks from confusion. Maybe all those times Vernon and Petunia had screamed at him how they should have left him rot in one of those, like that would have been any worse than living with them, had really left some subconcious fear in him.

Young Voldemort had looked so much like the teen boy he had met down in the Chamber of Secrets. He also looked like his father, Riddle Senior, like Harry knew now. It was almost breathtaking. People always reminded Harry how much he looked like his father, but those people had certainly never seen Tom Riddle and how even his voice was a high pitched copy of his father´s.

The meeting itself had been so different from Harry meeting Hagrid for the first time. He could hardly belive both Voldemort and him had been introduced to magic for the first time at age eleven. Where Harry had been wary and astonished, Tom Riddle’s face had gone from closed and cold to extraordinarily pleased and _knowing_ in a matter of seconds. Harry had tried to convince Hagrid he was nothing special, Lord Voldemort had embraced magic like a second skin and asked just how special he truly was.

The soulmark debacle, though, had been so similar and so different at the same time. Harry kept going back to that part of the memory again and again.

“I can talk to snakes,” had said Riddle, and before Dumbledore could answer, he had added “and my soulmark is frozen. Is that normal, for someone like me?”

Dumbledore had looked at him for a long time before answering with caution dripping from every word.

“Some people have been know to talk to snakes, yes. Not an usual gift, but not unheard of either.” He had taken a deep breath, eyes tingling with slight pity “As for the… unsettling soulmark…”

“It’s not broken.”

“Pardon me?”

“You said ‘unsettling’, sir” Tom Riddle’s voice had been nothing but polite the entire conversation after Dumbledore introduced himself as a wizard, but right there and then his voice had turned icy, his tone almost dangerously calm. Harry knew that tone. It was the same Voldemort used in his nightmares when torturing someone. “But the way you said it, it almost sounded like you thought it was broken. It is not. There are numbers on it. One year, two months, thirty days, twenty one hours and forty five minutes and six seconds. It’s not broken. Just frozen. I’ve read books about it. Broken bonds have no numbers, not even zeros. It’s not broken.”

The room, in which a barely eleven-year-old held Albus Dumbledore´s gaze with a raised chin, had been silent for a long time.

“That is… also unusual, Tom. But I’m sure we can figure out what it means. May I take a look?”

Dumbledore had raised his hand, asking for Tom Riddle’s wrist, but the boy took a step back, hiding his hands behind his back with a small frown.

“No, it’s alright, sir. I’m sure Hogwarts has far more soulmark related books than the local library, I’ll take a look when I arrive to the castle.”

The memory had dissolved like grew smoke, carring away Tom Riddle’s dark eyes and the little peak of skin both Dumbledore and Harry had been able to see before the boy had hid his hands behind his back. The unforgiving, black ink had winked at Harry from the inside of Tom´s wrists.

Tom Riddle did have numbers on him.

And they kept filling Harry’s thoughts at the oddest times.

One year, two months, thirty days, twenty one hours, forty five minutes and six seconds. Such a short time.

“Strange soulmate mark, Voldemort’s,” Dumbledore had said when the two of them stepped out of the memory “Certainly not unique, but still uncommon enough to make someone think they are beyond different from the rest. But also a terrible curse, don’t you think so, Harry? To have one´s soulmate mark frozen in time.”

It was indeed rare. A frozen mark. And such a short amount of time. If the clock had been running, Voldemort would have met his soulmate as a child. Just like him. Harry had spent the last few days trying to figure out if having a frozen timer was worse than having one already on zero. Right now, the familiar shapes in front of his eyes reminded him of his cupboard. The loneliness, the terrible _fear._ He pressed his lips together in a tight line, and he knew he would reach the same conclusion he had every night since he had seen that particular memory, ever since Dumbledore had asked that particular question.

He would change his useless mark for Voldemort’s in a heartbeat.

Dudley had been the first one to ever point it out, when they were nearly six years years old.

“Why is his timer on zero, mum?”

Dudley, with his fifteen years nicely written on his wrist, had been the first person that had made Harry realize his mark was not normal.

Things hadn’t been bad, back then. His relatives had never bothered telling him about soulmarks, and Dudley had found a new way of mocking him during their Harry Hunting sessions, but Harry hadn´t understand yet what it really meant.

But then school happened. Near the end of Harry’s second year of education, the teacher had given her students the soulmark talk.

“And when you finally stand face to face with your soulmate,” he rember her saying in a sweet and excited voice, “your mark reaches zero.”

Young Harry had looked at his wrist, full of round ceros, and realized what had happened. He had already met his soulmate.

_He had already met his soulmate._

His eyes had left his mark and collided directly with Dudley’s. And right behind Dudley, the wolfish grins of his friends, which made a cold chill run down his spine. When had it happened?

_He had already met his soulmate_

That night was carved in his mind. He had been almost terrified to ask aunt Petunia about the mark.

“Well, I don´t know when that clock stopped, boy. Do I look like your personal maiden? Why should I care?”

“So, was it still running when I came here after the car accident?”

“I suppose. Yes, I think so… Now stop asking noisy questions and go clean the first floor, boy. You won’t get dinner until I can use our parquet as a mirror, you hear me?

Later that night Harry had looked at his soulmate mark and realization hit him like a bus. He already knew his soulmate, and whataunt Petunia had said it had confirmed his fears: it had been still running after the car crash. Which could only mean one thing: his soulmate was in Little Whinging.

He had rubbed his soulmark with light fingers and his eyes had fallen to the small angry purple bruise right below it, where one of his cousin´s friends had grabbed him so Dudley could hit him. Today’s Harry Hunting had ended quite quickly, but the bruises were a bit worse than the average ones.

Was one of Dudley’s friends his soulmate?

He remembered the panic at that thought, eyes big and afraid as they were pinned to the bruise. It was, wasn´t it? Harry did not have friends, Dudley and his friends made sure of that. He barely interacted with anyone else. When had Dudley started bringing friends home?

Was his other half one of the boys that hit him, insulted him, made fun of him? One of the boys that had laughed when Dudley had told them about Harry wetting the bed in his cupboard and Petunia calling him a disgusting little boy?

It was one of them, wasn’t it.

He had told himself that not having a soulmate was okay, when Dudley would flash his numbered mark around and shove it in Harry’s face back when they were little. And he had been right.

He had cried himself to sleep that night, Dudley´s friends´ faces in his dreams mixing with green light and screams, calling him soulmate while he ran from them as he tried to prevent another Hunting game. And he did exactly the same every night from that day on, until he had no more tears left for his soulmate, and the idea joined all the other things Harry James Potter didn´t allow himself to think too much about. The closet under the stairs. The red eyes in his nightmares. His parents.

His soulmate.

Things got better when he arrived at Hogwarts. Hagrid didn’t ask him anything and lots of people had seen their numbers on their skin drop to zero on the very first day. No one stared at his wrist. No one cared.

During his second year, the Tom Riddle from the diary of had proudly displayed his frozen mark and Harry had wondered, basilisk venom spreading through his blood, if it had ever started the countdown.

During his third year, Harry had almost asked Sirius about his mark. Did he know the numbers that had once been on his wrist? Did he remember? But Harry hadn’t told Sirius a single word, just like he hadn’t told him about anything else he didn´t let himself think about.

That summer he had let Piers kiss him. He could have been his soulmate after all. Any of them. He could feel Piers punches and insults and he remembered every single time the boy had held his arms behind his back so Dudley and the rest of his friends could take turns hitting the freak while his tongue lapped at his mouth. He hadn’t even seen his soulmate mark.

When Piers left, he had raged like he hadn’t in years. Muggle style. He felt angry and disgusting and the small park right outside Little Whinging had suffered his self hatred. ‘Fine’ he had thought at the time ‘Let these people at least some actual reasons to call me a delinquent.’

He had wanted to ask Sirius so many times, but he had never done so. Funny little thing, time. He used to think he had all the time in the world. Now Sirius was gone, and every time Harry was obligated to go back to Little Whinging, he couldn’t help but look at Dudley’s friends. At the rest of people who had always ignored or, in worst case scenario, even cheered at Harry being bullied when he couldn´t defend himself. Which one was his soulmate?

Harry was sixteen now, but he had started to rub his wrist with the same force a seven year old Harry used to do all those years ago in his cupboard under the stairs, trying to remove the mark from his skin. He hadn’t done it in years.

Tom Riddle’s clock had been frozen for years and years, but Lord Voldemort’s had showed a long line of zeros when he had raised his hand, milky and cold and _corporeal_ , to wave it in front of Harry’s face, his red eyes pinning Harry’s to the spot before he had whispered, low enough for Harry’s ears only ‘… _I can touch you… now.’_

Bloody Lord Voldemort had found his soulmate, and he had been old enough to remember who that soulmate was. He had found them. Everyone had. Even Harry himself.

One of them. _One of them._

His inner wrist was now red and sore, and once again the image of young Tom Riddle’s soulmate mark crossed his mind

One year, two months, thirty days, twenty one hours, forty five minutes and six seconds.

What an odd number.

 


End file.
